5/28/2001 @ 12:00AM

Charticle | Pass/Fail

More high school students drop out than educators would like to admit. And the GED may not be a substitute.

Dr. Alan Bonsteel is an emergency-room physician living in San Francisco who dropped out of high school (“I was bored to tears”) but nonetheless went on to medical school. As president of California Parents for Educational Choice, Bonsteel has forced educrats to admit that the dropout problem is far worse than the senior-year dropout number they usually report. Across the country, one in four high school students fails to receive a high school diploma. The proportion of students who graduated decreased markedly in the 1990s.

Some dropouts eventually pass a graduation equivalency examination leading to a General Equivalency Diploma. Lump diplomas and GEDs together and you can show a more stable “high school completion rate.” But Bonsteel cites evidence compiled by Pacific Research Institute researcher Lance Izumi indicating that employers do not regard the GED as a true substitute for a diploma.

One reason for the deterioration: the increasing fraction of Hispanic students within the student population. Their graduation rate is appalling (55% in 1999). The 1999 graduation rates for whites (82%) and blacks (73%) were higher than for Hispanics, but still were down during the 1990s.